The next part is the web server setup to hand out the FOS kernel and inits. Since I already installed the FTP service which relies on IIS, IIS is already installed. So all we need to do is prep for the FOS files.

Lets first create the directory structure that mimics the path on the FOG master server.

Now that we have the directory, we need to tell IIS to hand out any file that is requested. By default IIS will only pass out files with known extensions like htm, html, asp, and so on. But in our case we want IIS to hand out the inits that end in .xz and the bzImage which doesn’t have an extension. To do this we need to tell IIS to just hand out any file type request (the bzImage is what caused me some pain here, since we are saying any files requested from IIS it will hand out, which could be a security risk if the web site gets hacked)

(Update: 15-May-2017)You must go manually into IIS management console and add a new mime type of “.*” (dot star without the quotes) and with a type of “application/octet-stream”

There is a better way to configure IIS to send out files with any extension (even no extension) on a per directory basis.

Create the following file: C:\inetpub\wwwroot\fog\service\ipxe\web.config
Insert the following code into that web.config file

Now that IIS is all setup and ready you will need to copy all of the files from /var/www/html/fog/service/ipxe to the IIS server in the windows path IIS:\Sites\Default Web Site\fog\services\ipxe
You can use the following process to copy the files form your master fog server to the windows storage node.

And then finally back on the Windows storage nodenfsshare fogipxe /delete

(Update: 15-May-2017)
The files copied from the fog server seemed to come in with the wrong permissions so we need to reset the permissions on all files from the fog directory and below to the defaults by enabling inheritance on all of the files.the following command is wrong, its a place holder until the right syntax can be derived

icacls C:\inetpub\wwwroot\fog /grant "fog_users:M"

(End Update: 15-May-2017)

After you’ve copied the files to the correct directory on IIS you should test your setup.
First lets pull the FOG background. Open your browser and key in the url to the background. On my IIS server I’ll use this path, you will need to change the IP address to match your IIS server.http://<fog_server_ip>/fog/service/ipxe/bg.png
If all goes well you should see the picture of the fog background.

Now lets get a little daring. Lets pull memdisk (a binary file).http://<fog_server_ip>/fog/service/ipxe/memdisk
If all goes well you should be prompted with a save file dialog.

And then one last test, lets pull a file with an unknown extension.http://<fog_server_ip>/fog/service/ipxe/refind.efi
Again you should be prompted with a save file dialog.

Onto the next part. For this section we need to install a tftp server to allow pxe booting from your windows storage node. Windows does have a natively built in tftp client, but no tftp server. So for this part we will use an freeware tftp server that I’ve used for years (Tftpd32).

Go to the following URL: http://tftpd32.jounin.net/tftpd32_download.html
Download the tftpd64 service edition (installer)
Launch the installer you just downloaded.
Read and agree to EULA if you accept it continue.
Select (all) Options: Add start menu shortcuts, Add desktop icon, Start service Tftp32_svc, start service monitoring
Use default install location: C:\Program Files\Tftpd64_SE
Tftpd64 Service console should launch
Select the Settings button
Select the GLOBAL tab
Uncheck all options except TFTP Sever. The only selection option we need is “TFTP Server”.
Select the TFTP tab
For the base directory, select the browse button and then navigate to the c:\share\tftpboot folder
Select OK
In the tftp options section enable PXE Compatibility option. Leave all other settings at their default
Press OK
From a command windows with elevated rights

The remaining steps are to copy the contents of the FOG server’s /tftpboot directory to your Windows storage node’s c:\share\tftpboot folder. For this we’ll use NFS to export the directory on the FOG server and then mount that nfs share with your windows server.

On the Windows storage node from an elevated command promptnfsshare fogpxe /delete

If you can make it this far in the setup your storage node should be setup.

Todo list:

(done, images are now replicating because Todo #2 was required) Define the Windows storage node in the Master Storage Node (as of the next day all of my images and scripts from the Master storage node are now on the windows storage node)

(done, ftp server setup) Determine if the FTP service is really required for a storage node if we will only capture to the master node [edit] duh, ftp server is required for image replication. Must work on this now[/edit]

(done, tftp server setup) See if the tftp service is needed if we want to support remote pxe booting [edit] windows 2012 does not have built in tftp server, may have to use tftpd32 or similar if pxe booting is needed [/edit]

(www server is setup) Determine if IIS is needed to support serving out the kernel and init images

@Tom-Elliott I’m currently spinning up a new FOG 1.4.0 server to test multicasting across subnets (and usb FOS booting it now appears). I’ll divert that setup to test FOG with a windows 2012 server setup as a storage node. I don’t have a centos template on this dev box so its going to take me some time to get up to speed. I do have a windows 2012 template so that one shouldn’t take too long.

I would still expect it to take until this evening before I can get to testing with my day job and everything…

Right now this post is a jumbled up mess. I’m going to break down my POC environment and build it again. I’ll verify the settings are correct and post a concise kb one for 2008 and one for 2012. But in theory it does work.

Today I went in and registered one of my VMs on the dev fog server. I ran through the full registration and allocated this host to the “winsn” location.

I pxe booted the vm and saw that it initially connected to the dev fog server and then the dev fog server redirected the client to pull the bzImage and init.xz from the Windows storage node (!!getting excited level 20% !!).

The vm downloaded both bzImage and the init from the windows storage node cleanly (excitement level 50%).

I saw the FOS kernel boot and started the initial prep work for imaging (excitement level 80%).

Partclone did its prep work and started downloading the image (excitement level 90%). I quickly checked the windows storage node and ran netstat -an and this was the the line I was searching for

TCP 192.168.1.205:2049 192.168.1.6:747 ESTABLISHED

This told me that the windows storage node was communicating with an external (dhcp) device over the NFS protocol!!

Imaging completed and the workstation started booting windows (time for a smoke and a beer) [full disclosure I don’t smoke so I’ll just take two beers instead].

So it IS possible to setup a FOG / MS Windows Storage node. In the end I’m still not seeing the value in it, but it IS DOABLE.

For the remainder of this thread I’ll continue with the Windows 2008 R2 server as the windows storage node. If time permits I’ll circle back and attempt the same thing with 2012, but based on what I’ve done so far I have confidence that 2012 will work equally as well as 2008.

There is one bit of error data I found running through a QC check before moving onto the next part. I created the FTP site using the powershell command: New-WebFtpSite -Name "FOGFtpSite" -Port 21 -PhysicalPath "c:\share" -IPAddress "192.168.1.205" While testing I found that the -PhysicalPath switch did not update the ftp server setting causing the ftp server to report that the home folder could not be located. I went into the mmc console for IIS and manually set the homedrive for the ftp server. Once that was done I was able to login via FTP.

On to the QC checks before moving on to the FOG setup of this. For these tests we’ll use a windows 7 workstation.

First we need to test to see if the FTP server is working and we can login using the fog_user account we setup.

I next copied a host image from my production server to the dev environment. Once all of the files were in place, I went back to the FOG GUI and added an Image reference that defined the image I copied over from my production server.

And finally I restarted the FOGImageReplication service. Inspecting the /opt/fog/log directory you should see the replication service start up with a transfer log specifically for the windows storage node we just created (i.e. fogreplicator.log.transfer.WinStoreNode.log). If you see this long file, hop over to your windows storage node and inspect the directory c:\share\images to see if the image files have started to copy over from the FOG server.

Here is a rough outline on how to do this same thing with Windows 2008 R2. I hope to be able to test this as soon as I get my test environment rebuilt.

The following executed correctly on Windows 2008 R2 with Windows Managment Framework installed which installs PowerShell 3.0 I’m actually not using very many powershell commands here, basically just to add windows roles and features. Powershell on Windows 2008 is a bit lacking as compared to 2012.

@george1421 just a slight correction. It is not using 1.2.0 method of checking. That is way gone and the new method is faster and simpler. Each node is aware of the images they have available to them now where 1.2.0 just checked if it existed on the node it was to pull from. This would cause problems in 1.2.0 because the master was checked at task creation. The client would load up all the way and then if it was pointed at a node that didn’t have the image would fail quite dramatically. Now boot will only boot to a node that has the image on it.

Tom added some new code checks (30-Mar-16) that will have FOG revert back to the 1.2.0 way of checking for images if the storage node doesn’t respond properly to the http query. This opens the door again to proving if a windows storage node is possible.

Well my first round of tests have failed, but also did add some light onto what I suspected. The storage node needs a web server running because the master storage node makes some calls to the storage node for image deployment. The following is a call I trapped on the IIS server.

At this time I don’t think the windows server (or a synology nas) will function as a storage node out of the box. I could load apache or the php plugin for IIS and get it to work. But I’m not sure if its worth the effort.

I can setup nfs on windows, I can setup ftp and the images will replicate to the windows server. But without php and the rest of the storage node code, I’m at a standstill.